As reported by Exposing the ELCA in a previous blog (read here) the presiding bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, Mark Hanson, and his liberal religious leader friends wrote a letter to the U.S. Congress seeking to stop military aid to Israel. Proud of their work, the church leaders publicized their letter on the newswire. Well, what do you know? Jewish leaders found out about Hanson’s letter and are not at all pleased.

Here are some snippets from recent news articles addressing the situation:

“The letter, signed by 15 Christian leaders, including representatives from the National Council of Churches and a number of mainline Protestant denominations, provoked angry and articulate responses from the Jewish Council for Public Affairs (JCPA), the American Jewish Committee (AJC), and the Rabbinical Assembly of Conservative Rabbis (RA). The JCPA was spot-on when it said the letter represents an escalation in anti-Israel activity.” (read here)

"When religious liberty and safety of Christians across the Middle East are threatened by the repercussions of the Arab Spring, these Christian leaders have chosen to initiate a polemic against Israel, a country that protects religious freedom and expression for Christians, Muslims and others." (read here)

“The letter calling for hearings and reassessment was issued without outreach to longtime partners in public advocacy within the Jewish community. It was released on the eve of Shabbat, just before a long weekend of Jewish and American holidays. And it was distributed at a time when Congress is out of session, in the midst of the general election campaign.

We find these tactics to be disrespectful of channels of communication that have been constructed over decades, and an essential declaration of separation from the endeavor of interfaith consultation on matters of deep concern to the Jewish community. Indeed, we find this breach of trust to be so egregious that we wonder if it may not warrant an examination on the part of the Jewish community at large of these partnerships and relationships that we understood ourselves to be working diligently to preserve and protect.”

“. . .to selectively invoke the representations of a Jewish organization for their own purposes is reprehensible." (read here)

“It is outrageous that mere days after the Iranian president repeated his call for Israel’s elimination, these American Protestant leaders would launch a biased attack against the Jewish state by calling on Congress to investigate Israel’s use of foreign aid. In its clear bias against Israel, it is striking that their letter fails to also call for an investigation of Palestinian use of U.S. foreign aid, thus once again placing the blame entirely on Israel."(read here)

“ZOA National President Morton A. Klein said, ‘These church leaders are basically saying that Israel should be bullied by financial pressure into concessions to the unreconstructed, terror-supporting Palestinian Authority (PA), which does not accept Israel as a Jewish state and has not fulfilled its 19-year old commitments under the signed Oslo agreements to arrest terrorists, dismantle terrorist groups and end the incitement to hatred and murder that suffuses the PA-controlled media, mosques, schools and youth camps. In fact, the PA refuses to negotiate at all and has not done so for several years. Indeed, it is shocking that, despite all these things, these church leaders have not criticized the $600 million in U.S. aid to the PA or called for the PA to fulfill its signed commitments.At a time when Americans are being assaulted in countries across the Middle East (other than Israel) and at a time when Egypt, the most populous Arab state, has fallen under the domination of the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood, whose leaders have spoken with gusto about the coming demise of America, these church leaders are obsessed with penalizing and pressuring one country – Israel. Their preoccupation with and animus against the Jewish state seems boundless and is not disguised with pompous and insincere talk about their ‘moral responsibility’ to call for restricting aid to Israel.’”(see here)

“Their letter to Congress contains a brief appendix elucidating why they think conditions are deteriorating. There we learn of restrictions on movement in the West Bank, though not of the many ways in which the Netanyahu government in recent years has loosened those restrictions. There is no mention, for example, of the recent steps by the government of Israel to assist the Palestinian Authority as it faces a financial crisis. We learn of Israel’s 'comprehensive blockade' on Gaza but not that Gaza has a border with Egypt — or that it is still not fully open. We are told that Israel killed thousands of unarmed Palestinian civilians but not that the churches rely for this information on data provided by anti-Israel NGOs or left-wing Israeli groups. Those statistics show that a suspicious preponderance of the casualties are young males, hardly a cross-section of the unarmed Palestinian population. This too is an old story: NGOs claim a high number of civilian casualties, while the government of Israel claims that a high percentage of those wounded or killed were combatants. In one famous example, Hamas after the 2008–9 Gaza conflict admitted to numbers far closer to Israel’s official figures than to those of the NGOs. Of this issue the churches’ letter says nothing, simply accepting the numbers that critics of Israel supply.” (read here)

“you realize that there is essentially nothing that Israel has ever done to defend itself that these people have approved. They object to • the security fence;• travel checkpoints, even into Israel from the Palestinian territories;• targeted attacks on terrorists;• demolitions of homes known to be used by terrorists;• any military presence by IDF forces in the West Bank;• sea blockade of ships seeking to smuggle weapons into Gaza;• air strikes in any form;• ground incursions into the West Bank or Gaza.” (see here)

“. . .the letter will affect cooperation between the signatory organizations and the Jewish community, as the reactions of major American Jewish organizations already demonstrate.” (read here)

The ELCA has once again shown itself to be an enemy of the people of Israel and now the Jewish people know it.

Hamas and Fatah must be in a state of continuous, derisive amusement at the credulous sycophancy of the useful idiots in the ELCA and other moribund mainline denominations. Meanwhile, all over the Middle East, jihadist Muslim animus and terror campaigns against Israel continue unabated.

For that matter, the Great Satan, the United States, isn't getting a lot of warm fuzzies from Islamists these days, either. Maybe upon their retirements, ELCA leaders could volunteer to staff embassies in Libya, Egypt, Yemen, Tunisia, and . . . Gaza: " [ September 15, 2012] In Gaza, thousands of people rallied at demonstrations in Gaza City and the southern town of Rafah, a day after the ruling Hamas party urged citizens to turn out for protests after Friday prayers. Protesters waved the flags of the Hamas and Islamic Jihad movements, and set fire to American flags, chanting "Death, death to America, death, death to Israel"."

Dennis Prager writes:

". . . in Ramallah, the de facto capital of the Palestinian Authority, I interviewed Ghassan Khatib, director of government media for the Palestinian Authority and the spokesman for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. I asked him the same question: Do the Palestinians recognize Israel as the Jewish state? . . .

His long answer amounted to: "No."

There is no Jewish people, he told me, so how could there be a Jewish country? The Palestinian position is that there is a religion called Judaism, but there is no such thing as a Jewish people. (Interestingly, the Jews are referred to belonging to a religion only once in the entire Hebrew Bible -- in the Book of Esther, by the anti-Semite Haman.)

In other words, Palestinians -- people in a national group that never existed by the name "Palestine" until well into the 20th century -- deny the existence of the oldest continuous nation in the world, dating back over 3,000 years. Now, that's real chutzpah.

Indeed, the Palestinians deny that the Jews ever lived in Israel. That is why Yasser Arafat could not even admit that Jesus was a Jew; rather, according to Arafat, "Jesus was a Palestinian." To acknowledge that Jesus was a Jew would mean that Jews lived in Israel thousands of years ago, in a Jewish state, moreover -- long before Muslims existed, long before Arabs moved there, and millennia before anyone called himself a Palestinian. . . .

As Israel's ambassador to the United States, Michael Oren, wrote in The Washington Post. . .:

"Two Israeli peace proposals, in 2000 and 2008 ... met virtually all of the Palestinians' demands for a sovereign state in the areas won by Israel in the 1967 war -- in the West Bank, Gaza and even East Jerusalem. But Palestinian President Yasser Arafat rejected the first offer and Abbas ignored the second, for the very same reason their predecessors spurned the 1947 Partition Plan.

Each time, accepting a Palestinian State meant accepting the Jewish State, a concession the Palestinians were unwilling to make.

That is the issue. Not settlements. Not boundaries. The Palestinians, like most of their fellow Arabs and like many Muslims elsewhere, have never acknowledged that the Jews came home to Israel because they have never acknowledged that the Jews ever had a national home there. And they don't even acknowledge that the Jews are a people."

[ http://www.dennisprager.com/columns.aspx?g=7bafcb03-c8ea-4569-a281-f8f554561cbd&url=the_palestinians_want_peace_--_just_not_with_a_jewish_state -- The Palestinians Want Peace -- Just Not With a Jewish State" ]

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Dave from Minnesota

10/14/2012 10:25:50 am

Did you see Chilstrom's long guest editorial in today's Minneapolis paper? it was one long anti-Catholic rant (over gay marriage.....Chilstrom is for it, local Catholic leaders against it).

And if you want to see how much anti-Christian bigotry there is in Minnesota, read the comments. Funny thing is, the anti-Christian bigots like Chilstrom.

Chilstrom takes pains to prove he's a member in good standing of Moral Relativists 'R' Us:

"In our ELCA, we engage a wide spectrum of clergy and laity in developing statements to guide us in our thinking about complex social issues. When those statements reach our national assembly, they require a two-thirds vote for approval. But no one's conscience is bound by those statements. Dissent is fostered and welcomed."

Russell Moore nails the reason for the ignominious decline of mainline Protestantism:

"Frankly, we should be more concerned about the loss of a Christian majority in the Protestant churches than about the loss of a Protestant majority in the United States. Most of the old-line Protestant denominations are captive to every theological fad that has blown through their divinity schools in the past thirty years-from crypto-Marxist liberation ideologies to sexual identity politics to a neo-pagan vision of God—complete with gender neutralized liturgies. Should we lament the fact that the Riverside Avenue Protestant establishment is now collapsing under the weight of its own bureaucracy?

What we should pay attention to instead may be the fresh wind of orthodox Christianity whistling through the leaves-especially throughout the third world, and in some unlikely places in North America, as well. Sometimes animists, Buddhists, and body-pierced Starbucks employees are more fertile ground for the gospel than the confirmed Episcopalian at the helm of the Rotary Club.

Accordingly, evangelicals will engage the culture much like the apostles did in the first century—not primarily to “baptized” pagans on someone’s church roll, but as those who are hearing something new for the first time. There may be fewer bureaucrats in denominational headquarters, but there might be more authentically Christian churches preaching an authentically Christian gospel."

http://www.russellmoore.com/2012/10/09/farewell-to-the-american-protestant-majority/ -- Farewell to the American Protestant Majority

Reply

Ken

10/15/2012 02:08:35 pm

This year Iowa voters have the opportunity to oust Supreme Court Justice David Wiggins, who ruled that it is "unconstitutional" for the legislature to disallow same-sex marraige.

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Brian

10/15/2012 12:24:03 pm

Here's what the Koran says: "...kill those who join other gods with God wherever ye shall find them; and seize them, besiege them, and lay wait for them with every kind of ambush; but if they shall convert, and observe prayer, and pay the obligatory alms, then let them go their way..." (Sura 9:5). "Make war upon such of those to whom the Scriptures have been given as believe not in God, or in the last day, and who forbid not that which God and His Apostle have forbidden, and who profess not the profession of the truth, until they pay tribute out of hand..." (Sura 9:29). "Believers! wage war against such of the infidels as are your neighbors..." (Sura 9:124; J.M. Rodwell translation). For an exegesis of these verses, go to www.AnsweringMuslims.com and watch the video, "Qur'an in Context 1: 'Fight Those Who Do Not Believe.'"

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Brian

10/30/2012 01:27:06 pm

"In 628 Mohammed traveled toward Mecca with 1,400 of his followers and made camp nearby at Al-Hudaybiyah. Fighting was avoided when Mohammed and the Meccans agreed on a treaty to suspend hostilities toward one another for ten years. Based on that treaty, Mecca viewed Mohammed as nonaggressive and disposed to friendliness. Mohammed, however, had a long-term strategy to incorporate Mecca into Islam. He knew that he couldn't win the battle with the Meccans if he fought them now, so he used the time granted by the treaty to build his army, and strengthen, recruit, and rejuvenate it, and then declared war on Mecca two years later when least expected....the history of the treaty of Al-Hudaybiyah shows us that using temporary treaties and lying to infidels to advance Islam is not only acceptable, it is sanctioned and blessed by the Prophet....[Yasser] Arafat began referring to Al-Hudaybiyah shortly after signing the Oslo Accords in 1993....He again cited Al-Hudaybiyah as the basis of his peace with Israel....Arafat referred to Al-Hudaybiah over and over again in many statements....While many today would argue that Arafat was not an Islamist but a nationalist, no one can argue with the fact that he used Islamic principles based in the Koran and on the actions of the Prophet Mohammed as the basis for his negotiations and strategy of war. --Brigitte Gabriel, THEY MUST BE STOPPED (New York: St. Martin's Press, 2008), pp. 33, 39-40. Full text posted at http://www.scribd.com/doc/76943991/They-Must-Be-Stopped-Because-They-Hate-Us

The problems in Israel are found to be a never ending one and we can see so many news related to it every day on newspaper. This news feels to be sad and because of all these the common people are suffering. Thank you.

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Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. 1 Thessalonians 5:21

Dan Skogen

Former ELCA seminary student and former ELCA member who is fed up with the ELCA's consistent mockery of God's Word.